Charge: Kirkland school worker viewed child pornography at campus

Lake Washington Institute of Technology staffer was fired after his arrest

Updated 1:26 pm, Wednesday, October 19, 2016

A 35-year-old Everett man was charged with viewing child pornography at a Kirkland technical school, where he was arrested last year after his manager confronted him.

Leif Otterholt was a maintenance technician at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology until he was arrested on campus in July 2015. He was fired soon thereafter, according to the school.

King County prosecutors filed a charge of second-degree viewing child pornography on Oct. 5.

A director at the school reported Otterholt to police last year, claiming that he caught Otterholt viewing child pornography on a school computer in a classroom. Using a program that allowed him to remotely monitor Otterholt's computer activities, the director took screen shots of some of the suspected pornography sites, according to Kirkland police reports.

While the school employee walked with an officer toward the classroom where Otterholt was suspected of viewing the pornography, they ran into Otterholt, reports say.

The officer asked Otterholt what he was doing, and he replied that he had just finished uploading files to a computer and was on the computer for a couple hours. He reportedly denied doing anything else, but then claimed he was playing games before finally admitting to viewing porn, O'Neill wrote.

When the officer questioned him more about the sites he looked at, Otterholt reportedly could no longer make eye contact and appeared to be nervous. Otterholt also allegedly refused to hand over a flash drive he carried in a pocket.

While one officer detained Otterholt, another looked at the school employee's screen shots of Otterholt's computer activity. One shot included a website called "Kindergarten Erotica," as well as other images that appeared to depict underage girls in sexual scenarios.

Officers arrested Otterholt and seized his flash drive, which was damaged.

Detective O'Neill forensically searched the school computer on which Otterholt is accused of viewing the pornography and found 35 cached images of underage girls engaged in sexual conduct, reports indicate.

Kirkland police handed the flash drive over to U.S. Homeland Security investigators for repair and inspection. As of August this year, the flash drive was still with the federal agency.